by Lindy Zart
"Interesting theory."
She pauses. "I'm not sure if that made sense. I had a glass of homemade blueberry wine earlier at Alice's. I brought her over a flower and she wouldn't leave until I had a full glass of it."
I laugh. "It made enough sense."
"Good." She hesitates, and then smiles. "Want to get ice cream at the Ice Cream Shoppe?"
I'm getting to my feet before she is finished talking. "You don't even need to ask."
As we walk, I tell her, "Rivers tried to lure me over to his house today with ice cream."
She laughs, swiping hair behind her ear. "What flavor?"
I swing my arms as I think. "He had a variety. Chocolate chip, strawberry, and butter pecan."
"Why didn't you go?"
"The selection wasn't that great." At her look, I shrug. "I wasn't ready yet. Tomorrow I will be."
"Tomorrow, huh? You have your bravery set to return on a certain day, do you?"
"No. That's just when I told him I would see him again."
"You're still scared after our talk?"
I stop walking, watching the cars and trucks as they move down the street, the sun reflecting off their windows. "I don't think I'll ever not be scared. I'll just, you know, work around it. That's what you do, right?"
She puts her arm around my shoulders and touches her head to mine. "That's what you do."
THE ACIDIC CITRUS FUMES ARE getting to me, causing a pounding behind my temples. I'm hoping it'll stay a dull ache and not turn into something worse. I've spent the last three hours making the small shop as squeaky clean as I possibly can, putting all of my frustration and feeling of ineptitude into the washing of the walls and mopping of the floors. 'I Want You Here' by Plumb really isn't helping me in my quest to ignore reality. I know I need to be fearless. I want to be. I have to remember how to be, from day to day. And Rivers—Rivers makes me fearless. I need his physical presence to remind me that I am not sinking; I am standing. No, I am flying.
I have to use this body, mind, and heart to their maximum potential while I still have the capability. I need to feel, not just emotionally but physically as well. And what I want, what I need, what I covet, what I love, is Rivers. I realize caring for someone is painful, I realize opening up to him in all ways will eventually hurt to an unbelievable degree. I know I need to stop being scared of what I feel and just...feel it.
I also know he is looking at me right now like his whole existence rests upon my next course of action.
“Hey.” He nods, moving just inside the doorway. I caught a hint of fear, desperation, and hope in that three-lettered word.
His black hair is longer, covering up the scar above his temple. The wounds have faded from pink to a pale tan. If he wanted, he could have his old life back, or some variation of it. Looking at him sends my pulse into a crazy rhythm only my heart can understand. Being so close to him and not touching him is excruciating to me. I didn't realize how much I truly missed him until he is once again standing before me. I can smell his clean scent, I can feel his eyes devouring me as he tries to replace the recent loss of me by sight alone. My eyes, in turn, rove over him like it is the first time they have been acquainted with beauty.
I set the rag and cleaning solution on the white porcelain of the sink. “Hey.”
“Your mom told me you were back here.”
“Figured that.” When he doesn't reply, I shift my feet and tell him, "I was going to call you. Today, actually." That was the plan once my shift is done. I was going to go home and call him, or possibly be brave enough to go to his house after work. I hadn't decided which yet, but it doesn't matter now, because here he is.
"I enjoyed your text this morning immensely." He pauses. "'My mom always told me to find something to believe in, so I decided not to like feta cheese. I protest that shit like you wouldn't believe.' Catchy."
I shrug. "Your reply was better. 'I don't like feta cheese, but goat cheese is okay.' That should be on a shirt."
A grin teases his lips, but is erased as soon as his eyes lock with mine. “It's been three days.”
I lower my gaze, because when I look into his eyes, I see so much, more than I ever thought I'd see in them for me, and it makes me want to cry. I wipe at a speck of dirt on my pink tank top. When it refuses to disappear, I tighten the rubber band around my hair so I have something to do with my fingers. He just keeps watching me, silent and still, and it gets to be too much.
Finally unable to take the quiet any longer, I ask, “Three days since what?”
Three days since I quit, three days since I walked away, three days since I've felt the way only Rivers can make me feel.
“Since I've had you next to me while I sleep. I miss it. I miss you.”
I don't answer. Each night I struggle to sleep, needing his arms and finding only emptiness to hold me during the long hours of nothing and everything. It feels like I am alone in an unending world of disquiet without him. I wonder if this is what death feels likes—this limbo state of black consciousness that you can never awaken from.
“I want to wake up next to you in the morning.”
My eyes fill. “I don't think your mother would have the same view on that.”
He gives me a half-smile and his eyes light up. “Okay, then I want to wake up every morning knowing I'll see you.”
The pain is fast, intense. I rapidly blink my eyes, but it does no good. The tears fall anyway. I avert my face and Rivers quickly tugs me to him, his hands resting on my hips as he stares down at me. We're in this silent showdown as our eyes memorize the features of the face before us.
“Whatever I did to push you away, you have to forgive me—I need you to. I...I can't lose you.” He swallows. “I mean, I guess I don't really have you, but I feel like I do. I feel like when you smile at me...my whole body feels it. I've never felt so much so soon for anyone. I don't want to lose this feeling. You woke my soul up and the rest of me followed.”
“You did absolutely nothing wrong,” I tell him in a voice that shakes, his words filling me with emotions too great to try to decipher. I woke up his soul. I woke up...his soul. Those words are so very precious to me. I mentally wrap my heart around them to keep them near me always.
“Then why did you quit? Why did you avoid me? Why are you still avoiding me?”
“I needed some time...to think.” The words I speak are true, but it was more than that. I needed to sort it all out, stop feeling sorry for myself, and be thankful for what I get. I tripped and stumbled off the course of my path and now I am back on it.
“And now?”
I meet his eyes. “And now I know what I have to do.”
Wariness creeps into his expression. “What's that?”
“Let you wake up knowing you get to see me.”
Rivers' fingers slide into my hair, causing the rubber band to fall out. He grips my face and lowers his lips to mine. His voice is low and full of fervor when he whispers, “I don't know how I missed you all those years. You were there, right there, and I never saw you in the way you deserved to be.”
“But you do now.”
"I do now."
"That's enough," I tell him.
He presses a kiss to my forehead, moving his hands down my arms to my sides. "Don't do that again."
"I won't," I promise, wondering if at some point he and I will both regret these words. There may come a time, when it will be best to place as much distance between us as possible, for both of our benefits. What will we do then?
"Better not. I don't expect you to come back to work, but I can't go without seeing you. Deal?"
"Deal. I'm sorry I left. I shouldn't have. It was stupid, cowardly." I blink my eyes against tears. "I didn't want to go."
His fingers tighten around my waist. "Then why did you?"
"I'm scared," I admit. "I'm scared about how I feel about you and what it means."
Rivers moves away and turns his back to me. "You don't think I'm scared? Every day with you scares the
piss out me, but every day without you was ten times worse. And yes, what I feel for you—it terrifies me. But the alternative is incomprehensible." He faces me again. "You and me..." He shrugs. "We work."
I grin. "We do, don't we?"
"We really do."
"Who'd your mom get for a replacement?"
Rivers groans, briefly closing his eyes. "A seventy-year old hag."
"Rivers!"
"She is like the housekeeper from hell, I'm telling you."
I cross my arms. "Really? Why is that?"
"First of all, she isn't you." He takes a step toward me.
"Yes, well, sacrifices and all that." I look to the ceiling, hiding a smile.
"And she smells like men's aftershave." He shudders.
"Hmm."
"She won't buy ice cream because it's fattening. Trust me, even my mom is having a problem with that one. My mom asked her to pick some up yesterday and she refused. It was kind of funny. The look on my mom's face was anyway, and the fact that she was serious."
"What's her name?"
"Meg. I call her Hag Meg."
"Charming," I murmur.
He takes another step closer. "She gets a fifteen-minute break every hour and she smokes like a chimney in front of my bedroom windows, so the smell comes inside if the windows are open. She doesn't get the rooms shiny like you do. She should be fired for that alone. She hums all day long. Even Thomas is afraid of her. The other day he didn't take his shoes off at the door and she yelled at him because she'd just cleaned the floors and he was dirtying them up already. And she doesn't sleep with me at night." He pauses, tilting his head. "Although, that one I'm okay with."
My face hurts from smiling so hard, but I can't remove the joy from my being. "She sounds perfect." I grab the front of his shirt and pull him to me.
"She really doesn't," he disagrees, inhaling sharply when I pull the collar of his tee shirt down to kiss the smooth skin beneath. My lips linger against the warmth of him as my eyelids slide shut and I inhale his scent I have ached for.
His nose nudges my cheek and I lift my face, his mouth immediately attaching to mine, bridging them, connecting us. I am awash in heat and love, desire and tenderness.
"You smell like bleach," he whispers close to my ear.
"I wore it especially for you." I smile and feel his smile on my lips before they meet again.
"I FEEL WEIRD PUTTING A name to what we have. I mean, it doesn't feel right—labeling us."
I look up from the flower arrangement I've been studying. I lost track of time letting the frail perfection of them sink in. The softness of the pink petals makes me think of raspberries. I place my chin in my hand and focus on Rivers. He's wearing a tee shirt the color of the ocean and khaki shorts. Warmth waves through me in gentle strokes of love.
"I agree. No labels."
Frustration takes over his features. "Then what am I supposed to call you?" He nods at Nancy, my mom's full-time assistant, as she sweeps by, immediately turning back to me.
"Del, Delilah, Bana, girl not related to Eric Bana, sexy lady, hey you..."
"It isn't enough." He moves to the counter I'm sitting behind, tapping the fingers of one hand against the top of it. "You can't just be some girl I know."
"You have no idea how glad I am to just be some girl you know," I tell him thickly.
His expression clears as he looks at me, leaning forward to bring his lips to mine. "You're my girl," he whispers against my mouth. His words wrap around me like a warm hug and I close my eyes to better feel the enormity of them. "What are you thinking?"
I open my eyes to find his directly before me. There are flecks of pale brown and gold within them, even a hint of olive green. "That being your girl is all I want to be. That this—that we—are impossible, and yet, we make sense like nothing ever has before."
Half of his mouth lifts and he nuzzles my neck. "We're almost like peanut butter and bacon on toast, right?"
I perk up. "Did you make one?" A slow smile takes over my mouth when he won't meet my eyes. "You did, didn't you? Did you like it? You loved it. I can tell. Don't deny it. I see through your lies."
"I only made it to feel closer to you."
I laugh. "I suppose you only ate it to feel even closer to me, right?"
He scowls, but a hint of a grin flirts across his lips. "Are you ready to do this?"
I hop down from the stool. "You bet. I'll make sure Mom is ready to go and meet you outside. Where's your mom?"
"She dropped me off to run an errand. She'll be back any minute. I'll wait outside."
I call for my mom as I walk through the cool interior of the shop, finding her in the small room she calls her office. I thoroughly dislike this room. There is no window and it is cramped to the point of being claustrophobic. There's just enough room for her desk, two chairs, and a wall of shelving. I tried to brighten it up when I was ten, drawing hundreds of pictures of different colored flowers for her to hang on the walls. They're still here, faded and wrinkled, turning the walls into a fortress of cartoonish blossoms.
She closes a book and gets to her feet, smiling as she meets me at the door. "All set?"
"Yeah. Nancy is closing up now. Rivers is here. Monica went somewhere and will be back shortly."
She nervously tugs at her dirt-smudged shirt. "I wish I could have changed first. I felt so dingy compared to her the other day when she stopped."
"That's because you were working and she was not. She doesn't work. She can do whatever she wants to do and she never gets dirty."
"She seemed sad," she comments.
I bite my lip so I don't tell her it might be because Thomas decided to go back to stay in California indefinitely. Rivers told me in a text last night. It sounds like they are separating. I don't know the full details of their marriage, but I saw a version of what I wouldn't think a happy marriage should be, even though my time with them was short. Rivers sounded confused, like he didn't know if he should be happy or sad about it. I told him it was okay to be both and he told me to quit shoving my intellect in his face. Then he said he ate all the ice cream so I needed to bring more over. I said I was on to him and he replied that he wished I was on him. I smile as I remember.
"It's because her son keeps eating all of her ice cream."
My mom rolls her eyes. "Come on. Let's not keep them waiting. She seems nice," she adds.
"She is. You'll like her."
Monica kept her promise, coming to talk to me almost as soon as she got back into town. At first she just looked at me, and then she pulled me into her arms, thanking me, begging me to come back for Rivers, and finally getting herself under enough control to apologize. And then she asked again if I'd come back. I said no. She offered extra money for my time at her house while she was out of town. I vehemently said no. And then she hugged me again, telling me she was so glad we started a conversation that day at the store, and then told me she wanted the four of us to have dinner. I agreed, inviting them to our house for lasagna.
So here we are.
My fondness for Monica grows as I take in her casual outfit of jean shorts and a plain white top. She made sure to dress down so my mom didn't feel out of place in her presence. Or maybe she is just sick of wearing pristinely pressed outfits. I know I would be.
She smiles as our eyes meet, immediately turning to my mom. "Hello. We didn't get a chance to talk the other day. I'm Monica, Rivers' mom, and Delilah's former employer."
The smile my mom bestows upon her is genuine. "Hi. I'm Janet, Delilah's mom, and current employer." They both laugh and Rivers and I share a look.
"We walked to work today so we don't have a vehicle here. Do you guys want to walk over or take your car?" I ask when the silence draws out.
"Oh, um..." Monica looks at Rivers.
"Rivers has walked farther," I tell her, wanting to make sure any feelings of pity are wiped out before they can begin. Rivers is not the same young man he was when she left for California.
She
frowns, but it quickly clears as she searches my stoic features. She nods. "Good. Okay."
My mom takes the lead, Monica quickly falling into step with her, their conversation at first stilting, but becoming steadier the longer they talk. Rivers hangs back, snatching my hand up and bringing it to his mouth to place a kiss upon it. He threads his fingers through mine, holding our clasped hands close to him.
"Thank you," he says quietly.
"There's nothing to thank me for."
"There is. There's so much." He inhales deeply, opening his mouth and closing it. After a moment, he shakes his head and begins to move.
My feet fall into step with his as I place a hand on his forearm. When he looks at me, I ask, "What is it?"
He looks torn, unsure of whether or not he should tell me his thoughts. His eyes meet mine and he seems to draw strength from that. With a deep sigh, he tells me in a low voice, "I lost something that day on the river. It isn't something I can get back, it isn't something I want to get back. At first I thought I did, but then I realized losing it was a good thing. Do you know what I thought all throughout high school? I thought I was better than everyone. I really did. The conceit of always winning took its dark toll on me. I thought, everyone wants to be like me. I am king of this school and I deserve to be, because I'm good at sports and people like me. People acted like I was something special, and after a while, I believed I was."
He swallows, looking straight ahead. "And then the life I knew was gone. Just like that. I looked in the mirror and saw a scarred person who could barely walk. It was all taken away—everything I had ever had or thought I wanted. Gone. I hated myself, but what I hated more was that I used to think I wasn't anything unless I was something—just like Thomas always told me. Then I was nothing. And when I was nothing, I finally was better—not better than anyone else, but just...better. Better than I used to be. I lost my old life that day, but I also lost my arrogance. I had to hit the bottom to realize the ground was hard." He grins sardonically.
I smile back, warmed by his words, by his sudden outlook on life and himself. I don't respond; I just take his hand and continue walking. There is a warm breeze to alleviate the glare of the hot sun and I inhale the scent of grilling food and freshly mowed lawn. The scents of summer are some of the best ones. I watch the people around us in the their yards, their cars, their world.
